Sweet Romance11 min read
The Cherry Handkerchief and the Emperor's Quiet War
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I was kneeling on cold stone when I said it out loud.
"Your white moonlight has returned. I'll step aside," I told him.
Orlando frowned. He looked at the steward beside him and asked, "What rank is Haven now?"
"Your Majesty, she is a mere attendant," the man answered.
Orlando rubbed his chest with a hand and gave a small laugh. "Good. I nearly had a fit hearing she wanted the throne. An attendant—what can she give up?"
My fist tightened in my sleeves. "It's not the rank. If the woman you love has come back, I'll leave the palace. I'll step out of this life. Everyone can be happy."
He cocked an eyebrow. "You want to leave? Where would you go?"
"Anywhere," I said. "To live quietly. To find another match."
He stepped forward, put a hand over my head, and ruffled my hair like an uncle. "Don't be ridiculous. Go wash and sleep. Dreams are bad at night."
He turned and left with his retinue. I stared after him until his shadow vanished. My small blaze of anger turned into something else—shame, then a rash rush of childish impulse. I sprinted after him and, before anyone could stop me, I kicked the hem of his robe.
He bellowed, "Haven Calderon! Wait!"
I ran.
When I was a child my father had sent me into the palace to secure our family's future. I did not expect to walk into the person who made my family's life bitter. We had a history—long enough that every look between us carried old scraps of pain.
When Orlando chose me in the selection he did not choose me as a favored concubine. He gave me the smallest possible title—an attendant. The other girls became consorts, one by one. I became a shadow.
"Don't be sad, Miss," my maid Jillian whispered, "the Emperor is busy with state matters. He'll see you when he can."
I smiled at Jillian with a practiced softness.
I knew why Orlando kept beds empty. He kept a promise for a woman who was his white moonlight—Emma Collier, the general's daughter. Emma's father had once chosen a side that lost in a fight for power; Orlando spared the family but sent them to the frontier and asked that Emma be protected. He never hid his favor toward her.
Now, the year of exile had ended and Emma came home.
I blocked Orlando's path after court one afternoon. He saw me, paused, and said, with that casual cruelty he had:
"Oh, it's you. Been a while."
"I'll let you have her," I told him plainly. "You can have all you want."
He blinked and then asked a palace servant, "What title does Haven hold?"
"An attendant, Your Majesty."
He breathed out like someone relieved of a bad thought. "Good grief. I almost thought I'd accidentally made her Empress."
Then he turned to me, amused. "What would you give me to make you leave, little attendant?"
I bit my tongue until it hurt. I had come with a plan—of sorts. There were many women like me, delivered to this house by fathers with chips to cash. If Orlando's moonlight returned, others would be left without hope. The palace bloomed with women who had arrived for politics, not love. Some would rather leave and marry into peace.
"Let us leave," I said. "Send us home. Let us marry other men. Let us live."
He cocked his head. "You want to go home."
"Yes. For everyone's good."
He sighed, touched my head as if I were a child, and walked away. I could have cried then. I didn't. Instead I kicked his robe with the same childish fury and ran.
Back in my small room, Jillian looked at the scar where tea had burned my arm that morning and asked, "Why did you do that?"
"Because I'm stupid," I said. "Because sometimes I think he's still the boy who broke into our wall. Because I'm tired."
Jillian reached out and patted my hand. "You need to be careful, Miss."
Days later the palace gate opened and, like a tide, the other consorts gathered in the garden. There was talk. Gossip comes fast in gold corridors—the kind that threads every sister and cousin and servant. Kassidy Anderson had come, bright as always. The others—Celia, Audrey, Kaleigh—were there too, nodding and whispering.
"She's gone to see the Emperor," Kassidy murmured when she saw me. "Did she tell you? Haven, the Emperor sat with her quite a while."
I kept my face calm.
"They asked what happened," Kassidy said. "I told them he is...delicate. I told them he would not sleep with ladies anymore."
My mouth formed a smile. "Oh? And what did you say?"
"I said the Emperor… is not well," I said. I lowered my voice to a whisper. "I said he cannot… perform."
It was a lie. But lies sometimes serve better than truth. "He was wounded in the past," I told them, eyes lowered. "Perhaps he never fully recovered."
They listened as if the sound would save them. If they believed me, they would not throw themselves into the arms of a man who kept one throne warm for another. They could leave with dignity.
Kassidy's face brightened. "Then we won't seek his favor. We can leave with our families in peace."
I felt my small triumph like a stone in my palm.
Then Orlando's voice cut like a bell from the doorway. "Haven Calderon, you want to die?"
The room went cold. Every head turned.
He stood in the open, more severe than any smile could hide. His eyes fixed on me.
"What did you say?" he asked.
I swallowed, then spoke with the same calm I used in the garden. "I only said what would spare the others distress."
He came closer with slow steps, sleeves sweeping. "And did you think you could safe them by lying?"
"I thought—" I started.
"Leave," he said. "Out."
He pushed me down until my forehead touched the stone. Behind him, a woman—Kassidy—fell to her knees. Everyone's breaths were loud.
Then Orlando whispered, near enough for only me to hear: "You said I am useless. You said I am broken. Did you mean it?"
"I—" I couldn't be brave enough to lie.
He pressed his palms to my shoulders, making me look up. For a moment, I saw something not cruelty: a tired honesty that scared me.
"You said I can't," he murmured. "Do you want to test me?"
My throat closed. I had wanted to provoke, to bargain for others. Instead I had poked a lion's pride. That night in the moonlight we argued like two children; we fought with words that scraped and with old memories. I cried. He wiped my face like something he could not name.
"Why would you do this?" he asked softly.
"Because they deserve to be spared," I said.
"Because you are cruel," he replied, then sighed. "All right. You say you wanted them free. Do not regret this."
That night, after more wine than I should have had, I fell asleep on a cushion in a hall that smelled of orange peel and incense. I dreamed of the first time I'd seen him—the night of lanterns. I remembered a small glass fish lamp and how easily things break.
Morning came in a tumble of news. Emma Collier had been given the highest title—Empress Consort. People whispered "golden room." I listened and felt knives—jealousy, then a sharp guilt. Emma was my childhood friend. We had slept with one blanket as girls and shared remedies her grandfather taught her. I loved her like a sister. I saw how Orlando looked at her—like he had once been looking at a ghost.
The same week, papers flew with proclamations. I was told by my father that there was a plan to marry me to the Crown Prince—Lane Jensen. I was to be the Prince's bride. It should have been joy. Instead, new iron pressed on my ribs. I was engaged to another man I barely saw; Orlando remained his cold, distant self. The palace is a small machine, and every gear must fit.
Then war came. Swords and banners, then silence. The Crown Prince, Lane Jensen, fell. The world I expected had vanished. My betrothal was void. I waited for the ground to stop moving. It did not.
Orlando pulled the strings that day. He took what he thought was right. He had a way with control, and when a man wants the crown, he will cut down anyone who gets in his path.
The city convulsed. Families shouted and were moved like they were tokens. Men were executed, exiled. The very roofs seemed to mourn and then go quiet.
In the chaos, Emma did something I never expected. She prepared a cure, and then she left the palace, announcing she wanted to travel to heal and to teach. She would not be a puppet in golden halls.
I felt torn between two loyalties: I had lied on purpose to free a few women out of my charred hope that I could stop the machine of court hunger. But the price had been others' fears. Emma left, and Orlando—no longer the boy who had guarded secrets—sat taller with power and less softness.
Time passed like a sea tide. The women who had been brought to the palace—wives of ministers and daughters of generals—began to write home. "Take us back," they wrote. "We cannot be onions in a box. We will not wither here." One by one, families retrieved their daughters. My rumor—the one about the Emperor's incapacity—had worked better than I had dared hope. The palace rooms emptied.
A rumor can be a small weapon. But weapons cut both ways.
When the last formal petition landed on Orlando's desk—signed by the women I had spared—he called a council. The ministers who had pushed daughters into the palace and those who had spread slander came forward to petition. They wore silk and smiles.
I sat hidden behind a pillar and watched Orlando stand. He did not look monstrous. He looked like a man who had been sharpened by cold decisions.
"Why are you here?" he asked the room.
"We ask for favors," came the smooth chorus.
He spoke in a slow voice. "You told me what the people said about me. You fed those words into the court like bread. You said I am cruel, that I beat my women, that I ruin their lives. Is it true?"
A man at the table, high-ranking and known for his gossip, flushed. "We speak the truth," he said. "We only tell what we hear."
Emma had returned unseen and stood beside him. She had the calm face of someone who had seen storms. The ministers were suddenly small.
Orlando told them plainly: "These women are not your pawns. They are not useful to your faction. You offered them and then sent them away to test whether I would keep them as trophies. You spread falsehoods to herd them like sheep. You used daughters to make crowns."
The room shifted. A woman in heavy pearls whispered, "My lord, we only protected our houses—"
"Protected by destroying lives," Orlando interrupted. "Tell me—who first began the rumor that the Emperor is infirm? Who first wrote that I would 'beat' the women?"
The man who had most loudly cried the rumor stood tall and then small. "It was for their safety... we had to warn—"
"Warn?" Orlando laughed, and it was a quiet sound with jagged edges. "By shaming me? By stripping dignity from my household so you can hold it as leverage?"
He raised his hand. "Bring them forward."
Two young stewards dragged men and women into the hall. The accused—ministers and their wives—stood under the chandeliers, faces pale now that the air had been turned. Servants clustered like moths around tapestries.
Orlando walked among them as a judge. He did not raise a blade. He spoke. "You have forced families to risk shame. You have sent daughters into cages to win my favor or to threaten me. You thought to play power like a game. You have been careless. For every lie you spoke, you must answer."
Then he ordered them: strip the silk, take off the rings. "Stand now," he said, "and be marked."
I watched as men who had once commanded armies were made small. They had to stand on a low platform and have their names called out. Orlando read each deed aloud: the lie spread, the letter forged, the match arranged for the palace only to be used as bait, the money taken for influence. He spoke of the girls' tears, of the nights someone was sent to sleep alone to avoid the jealous man's wrath, of the quiet wounds.
The court watched. Courtiers shifted in their seats; pages coughed. Outside the doors, guards waited. The crowd in the hall leaned forward.
"Let all these names be known," Orlando said. "Let your families know exactly how you traded people for promise."
He did not execute them. He had the taste of justice, not vengeance. Instead, he ordered public restitution. They were to ride through the capital with banners confessing their lies, to return the dowries they had kept, to write an apology to every family they had endangered. He assigned them to ten days of public service—feeding the poor and cleaning the streets while the city watched. Their titles were stripped; court favors revoked. Their faces were photographed—no, there were no cameras then—painted and posted where a merchant might point and say, "That was the man who sold a daughter for a promise."
The men protested, then begged. Some fell through stages of denial: "I didn't know," to "It was necessary," to "Forgive me." Others tried to salvage dignity. The crowd stung them with whistles and disdain. Pages pressed their palms to their mouths and recorded everything in tiny notebooks. A child giggled and then was hushed by a nanny. A woman among the crowd spat on the floor.
One minister, old and slick, tried to kneel and beg. Orlando looked at him with a flatness that made the old man's knees shake. "You profited," Orlando said. "You took the promise of a daughter and built a house on it. You deserve your house taken."
The old man dissolved. He crumpled and began to cry like a lost boy. Around him, the crowd hissed, and children pointed. It was a public spectacle of ruin—no blood, only dignity stripped.
It went on for an entire afternoon and into dusk. My chest ached watching faces I had once feared now flattened by shame. When it ended, the capital buzzed as if wide awake. People whispered: the Emperor had punished the market of lies. The women who had been forced into the palace were allowed to wear normal clothes. Their fathers took them home, and the letters of apology were sealed and handed over. Some of those fathers cried.
When night fell, I climbed the palace stairs slowly and found Orlando on the balcony, hands folded. The moon painted his shoulders silver.
"You made them confess," I said.
He looked at me. "You started a rumor to save them," he returned. "I saved them from the men who took them. Did you expect me to do nothing?"
"I'm sorry," I said. "They were only pawns. I thought I could fix it."
He stepped closer, voice thin. "And what about the price you paid? What lies did you tell me?"
"I told you a falsehood to protect them. I didn't think it would reach so far."
He sighed, and something like pity softened his face. "You are stupid and brave. You are my attendant—and sometimes my torment."
I kept my head down. "You could have punished them worse," I said.
"I could have," he answered. "But I chose to let them live with shame. I chose to close a door so we might open another."
When Emma returned to the palace before she left for the road, we shared an evening by the small tray of tea she had brought. She was going to leave for real now; she had wrestled with her duty and won the right to step away. We sat and talked. She told me about distant villages where a doctor is worth more than gold, and how she wanted to walk to the horizon and learn. I watched her outline the places she would go and felt, for the first time in so long, purity without craft.
"Promise me one thing," she said, touching my sleeve. "If you ever are lonely, come find me. Travel is large enough for two."
"I will," I said.
When Emma left the next morning, Orlando and I stood on the palace balcony and watched the carriage go. He did not seem crushed. Instead, a hard thing settled around his mouth. He put his hand in mine, not a lover's hold but something steadier.
"She could have stayed," he said.
"She chose herself," I said.
He swallowed. "I chose the crown. I chose this because I thought I had to."
"You are cruel, and you are kind," I said.
He laughed briefly. "That much is true."
Time moves like a river after a dam is broken: loud at first, then steady, then inevitable. Many things changed. The crown moved heavier on Orlando's head and somehow softer on his brow. I married the prince's fate in rumor rather than in ring—what should have been my union dissolved in the thunder of rebellion. The capital found a new rhythm.
Spring came and I was sometimes allowed to walk in the gardens with him. He would throw me a question like a splintered toy—"Do you remember the lamp?"—and I would answer, and we would both laugh like children who had stolen apples.
One night, when the garden smelled of orange blossom and the moon was thin as a sliver of shell, Orlando lifted my chin. Close enough, I saw the freckle near his ear from childhood. He brushed my hair back with clumsy fingers.
"Haven," he said, and his voice was only for me. "From the first time you cursed me in that lantern garden, I knew you were trouble."
"I thought you would kill me," I said.
He smiled. "I would have called it justice."
I reached up and tucked a small cherry-handkerchief—the one with the faded pattern he once laughed at—into his palm. "For remembering the lamp," I said.
He held it like something holy. "I will never forget it," he promised.
We did not speak of Emma's travels, nor of the men who had been disgraced. We let the past fold like a paper crane. The palace had been a place of lies and bargains; we had both used, been used, and survived.
I slept that night at his side, not as an attendant but as someone who had earned a place in the small, private world between two people. He did not always say the soft things. He showed them in quiet ways—an extra blanket when I'd been cold, a cloak thrown over my shoulders when the rain surprised me. He was a emperor fashioned by iron and purpose, but in the private hours he was a man who liked to laugh at small things and press his head to my shoulder.
When dawn came, I woke with his fingers entwined with mine. I looked down at the cherry-handkerchief folded into a neat square next to us and felt something like peace. The palace still whispered outside, but inside our thin world the moon had finally rested.
The End
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